Trigonocidaris albida Agassiz 1869

Trigonocidaris albida Agassiz, 1869

Reports for the Azores:

Trigonocidaris albida Agassiz, 1869 — $ Koehler 1895a: 224, 1895b: 228, 1898: 22–23, 1909: 227; Mortensen 1927a: 292, 1943b: 318–321 pl. 18, figs. 10–13; García-Diez et al. 2005: 50; Mironov 2006: 111; Benavides-Serrato et al. 2012: 71–72.

Type locality: Caribbean.

See: Mortensen (1943b); Benavides-Serrato et al. (2012).

Occurrence: cosmopolitan, in the North Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans (Mironov 2006); from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean (Benavides-Serrato et al. 2012) eastwards to the Iberian Peninsula (Koehler 1896) and Morocco (Mironov 2006), including the archipelagos of the Azores and Canaries, and the Seine, Josephine and Meteor seamounts (Koehler 1909, Mironov 2006).

Depth: 70–720 m (Mortensen 1943b); AZO: 349–550 m (Koehler 1909).

Habitat: mud, sand, gravel to hard substrates (Koehler 1898, 1909), and in association with azooxanthellate corals (Benavides-Serrato et al. 2012); feeds on foraminifera (Mortensen 1943b).

Larval stage: planktotrophic (Emlet 1995).

Remarks: in the Azores, Trigonocidaris albida is known only from Koehler’s reports (1898, 1909) based on material collected at several stations by the Hirondelle and Princesse Alice. The rarity of records in the archipelago might be explained by the minute size that characterizes this sea urchin, easily overlooked or lost (depending on the sampling method employed) during the rare occasions in which waters from its typical depth ranges (> 70 m) were surveyed in the archipelago waters (see also below remarks under Genocidaris maculata).